As great as it all looked for him a year ago, everything seems to be taking a turn for the worse right now. His GP2 results have been mediocre apart from his Barcalona win, probably because he doesn’t have the money to get a full-season contract somewhere and get accustomed to the team. Now Sauber has officially dropped him as their testdriver, probably to be replaced by Sirotkin. Now what…? Is this HUGE talent really going to miss out on driving in Formula 1?

It is a shame for Robin, but Sauber doesn’t have much of a choice financially. The deal was odd at best, since he never got to drive the car apart from the YDT.

Hilmer also needs cash and he has none. We can fiddle all we want about money being more important than talent, Niki Lauda entering F1 as a paydriver, how tthey’re not as bad as Deletraz, or how they’re ruining F1; but I’d like the discussion to move forward. Sirotkin isn’t some sort of GT Academy driver; he is doing fine in Formula Renault 3.5.

Robin needs to crack down on his sponsor search, buy a year’s worth of Red Bull straight from Mateschitz and look at how to further his career. F1 isn’t the only good category of motorsport. He also needs to stop with the ‘I did everything I could’ approach; look what it’s getting race winner Heikki Kovalainen.

I’d also like to state I am absolutely appalled at how Dutch fans have responded on national forums. My word, we can be a petty people from time to time, blaming Sauber for selling out and calling Sirotkin names like it’s high school..

What I don’t understand is, why are sponsors not wanting to associate themselves with young drivers who are clearly very good?

If I gave your company the choice of having your logo on the overalls of a driver who is widely considered to be a championship contender or another driver who is likely to be at the back of the grid all season, why wouldn’t you go for the more talented driver?

Because it’s very expensive to sponsor a driver with no guarantee of success and less guarantee of television coverage. The only companies that could really justify the expense are at the point of brand saturation, and so would get nothing for it.

Frijns had his chance to get sponsorship from Red Bull. And while his reasons for turning them down are laudable, he made his choice. He doesn’t have the right to complain that it was the wrong one.

If I gave your company the choice of having your logo on the overalls of a driver who is widely considered to be a championship contender or another driver who is likely to be at the back of the grid all season, why wouldn’t you go for the more talented driver?

Make sense to me but I’m not the one signing eight-figure cheques.

Shared nationality seems to be a big factor in most driver-sponsorship tie-ups. I think it’s importance is overrated. For example, since Hamilton left McLaren Santader now only use Button from the McLaren line-up in their ads. I’d be just as interested in their promotions if they involved Perez. Maybe that’s not the case for most people, or maybe Santander just assume it is, I don’t know.

The megastar drivers are able to get past it later on and get some backing from other companies – Hamilton and Reebok, for example. But it doesn’t happen for the Frijns of the world. If someone takes a chance on him and he ends up winning a couple of titles, maybe that’ll change. But it doesn’t help him much at the moment.

@npf1 Well I’m also on a Dutch forum and the news has been accepted a bit cold really. Although most people there want to see him in F1, they are now blaming both him and his management for this. First Robin has been a bit bold on both the media front and on Twitter. Looking back at his “Red Bull treats their drivers like dogs” comment, had he not done that I’m sure he could have been in het hunt for that Toro Rosso seat. When Hilmer had to drop him because they needed money, he called them #DouchebagTeam on Twitter, It’s not their fault the GP2 format sucks big time, and to think they actually took him back for another run at Spa…

His manager however seems to have convinced Frijns that he doesn’t need financial backing to get into F1. As a matter in fact I’ve heard that some prominent people in the Netherlands wanted to help him to get in contact with some big companies from Holland but his manager blocked all of this…

Concerning Sauber I can only share your vision on that Sauber hasn’t not been given a fair option, It was Frijns out and Sirotkin in or no Money.

In the end no matter whose fault it is, it remains a sad development. Oh and in the case you start wondering, I’m not Dutch but Belgian (I’d rather die :-)

@force-maikel Sites like GpUpdate (with Facebook comments, even) have found themselves a lot of people who regularly make stupid comments, but what I read yesterday was almost as low as the facebook comments on there after last year’s title was decided..

I’ve found other sites like F1today still have a lot of slamming and hating to read through to read a good comment..

I don’t necessarily think he made the wrong choice not joining the Red Bull programme, but his manager is only seen hanging around Hulkenberg most of the time. Hulkenberg found himself at Williams just before the exodus of sponsors and was promptly replaced. Basically, there are no teams like Williams between 06 and 10 around anymore, who can afford to hire a youngster without money.

Still, Frijns himself uses the words ‘luck’, ‘chance’ and variations thereof too often as well. He was quoted as saying ‘I am free now and I hope someone will give me a chance’. If you ran into an old friend from school with a degree but no job who had that attitude for finding a job, anyone would tell him to saddle up and look harder. Frijns needs to look harder, find his Keke Rosberg or Huub Rotthengatter. Hakkinen and Verstappen benefited a lot from having a personal manager; I think Frijns would too.

I don’t know if it’s true about his manager holding off corporations, but I wonder how a guy like Michel Perridon will plaster Trust logos on a AutoGp car for a Verstappen demo in Rotterdam, but won’t sponsor Frijns.

Still, Frijns himself uses the words ‘luck’, ‘chance’ and variations thereof too often as well. He was quoted as saying ‘I am free now and I hope someone will give me a chance’. If you ran into an old friend from school with a degree but no job who had that attitude for finding a job, anyone would tell him to saddle up and look harder. Frijns needs to look harder, find his Keke Rosberg or Huub Rotthengatter. Hakkinen and Verstappen benefited a lot from having a personal manager; I think Frijns would too.

@npf1 I can only agree with you that commentators on sites like GpUpdate and F1today and to some degree formule 1.nl are rarly objective and only resort to mindless ranting and cursing. That’s the main raison I have resorted to F1 fanatic, to at least have a respectable conversation, even if the viewpoint is opposite. That’s what I like about F1 fanatic, the fact that no matter how extreme your opinion, as long as it is put well together and with respect towards others, nobody slams a door on your face. I mean look at us even though we could be conversation in our mother tongue we still respect Keith’s wishes that comments must always be in English. However from time to time I struggle to put anything decent together and therefore a Dutch site is a pleasant option. I found one in the name of gppits.net. A smaller F1 news site with a small forum community. A fine group of gentlemen (Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, RB fans), everything goes, off course sometimes things get out of hands but the moderators quickly intervene and keep everything back on track.

Concerning Frijns, what I said about his manager blocking help is nothing more than a rumour, but you don’t need to be genius to actually put it into context. The fact that out of so many prominent companies in Holland, nobody wants to invest in a clear and obvious talent tells you all you need to know about that manager. Like you said he needs a personal manager that has only one client: Frijns. In my view it is the only way to get your way into F1 if you have no sponsorship. He needs someone who knows the sport like the back of his hand. However I don’t think someone like that is currently available in Holland and I don’t know who outside of Holland would want to do such a thing.

It strikes me that men like Verstappen and Doornbos and even Albers managed to get a seat in F1 with backing from Dutch companies. Even Giedo van der Garde has backing, and he took a very long route to F1. I know you Dutch are complaining a lot about your Economy lately but compared to a lot of European nations, you are not doing so bad at all.

First Robin has been a bit bold on both the media front and on Twitter. Looking back at his “Red Bull treats their drivers like dogs” comment, had he not done that I’m sure he could have been in het hunt for that Toro Rosso seat. When Hilmer had to drop him because they needed money, he called them #DouchebagTeam on Twitter, It’s not their fault the GP2 format sucks big time, and to think they actually took him back for another run at Spa…

Wow, he’s not only a complete tosser on the track but also off it.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so dismissive of the Red Bull driver program he could have been in contention for the Toro Rosso seat but instead he chose to dig his own grave.

It’s all good and well to complain about pay-drivers and how they’re all rich daddy’s boys who are looking for a hobby but the fact of the matter is that F1 is an expensive sport and mid table teams such as Sauber and Williams have no where near the amount of backing teams like Ferrari and Red Bull. Therefore it makes sense for them to go for drivers that bring a big wad of cash.

It’s obvious Frijns is a talented driver but he seems to think he can just walk into an F1 driver without no actual backing and considering to team he’s trying to walk into is one without much money it all seems a bit silly. I don’t know much about his management but judging on what the posters above me have said it seems like he needs to find a manager that can get him the backing needed to get into a mid table team instead of sulking and tweeting insults to teams that are willing to give him a chance.

Just to rectify: he didn’t call Hilmer a #douchebagteam, but he called himself #teamdouchebag. Al least that’s what I make of it, that he feels teams are playing him around. Still bad and not very clever, but not as bad as we are portraying him now.

Didn’t Frijns reject an offer to be a Red Bull young driver, saying that “they treat you like a dog”? I bet those comments are haunting him now. Winner of the FR3.5 championship and out of the job, meanwhile Felix da Costa is a shoe-in for a 2014 Toro Rosso seat. I do admire him for wanting to get to F1 on his own merits, seemingly shunning sponsorship and avoiding the dreaded “pay-driver” tag, but there really is no place in the F1 midfield for a driver without support, no matter how talented.

I’m not really sure who to blame for this. Perhaps Frijns should’ve swallowed his pride and sought after some funding. Or perhaps we should blame the higher-ups in F1 for doing so little to deal with F1’s spiraling costs that have ultimately caused Sauber to drop one of the finest young drivers around.